Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

His lordship goes on to describe the free-and-easy (and, on the face of it, wifeless) character of Mr. Hastings’ house. “A house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his dirty shoes: the great hall strow’d with marrow bones, full of hawks’ perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers; the upper side of the hall hung with foxskins of this and the last year’s killing; here and there a polecat intermixt; game-keepers’ and hunters’ poles in great abundance. The parlour was a large room as properly furnished. On a great hearth paved with brick lay some terriers, and the choicest hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little white stick of fourteen inches lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them.” (One does not feel much room for a Mrs. Hastings here. She kept her own quarters, I imagine.)

I should like to see a picture of old Mr. Hastings at his meals—with all his animals about him and his hand holding his little white stick. Steinlen, who designed that fine poster for Nestlé’s milk—the cats clamouring for the little girl’s breakfast—could draw the animals; but for the little old gentleman, with his red hair and green clothes and great age, you would want a Dendy Sadler or Stacy Marks.

The description of the house continues: “The windows (which were very large) served for places to lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows, and other such like accoutrements. The corners of the room full of the best-chose hunting and hawking poles. An oyster table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a day all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters, before dinner and supper, through all seasons; the neighbouring town of Poole supply’d him with them. The upper part of the room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a Church Bible, and on the other the Book of Martyrs. On the tables were hawks’ hoods, bells, and such like; two or three old green hats, with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry, he took much care of and fed himself. Tables, dice, cards, and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used.”—Mr. Hastings must have been one of the earliest of the smokers, since he was born as far back as 1551.

“On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly observ’d. For he never exceeded in drink or permitted it.” In another account of Mr. Hastings his iron rule with regard to liquor was suggested to have caused much unhappiness to his guests. And I must admit that there seems to be something wrong in a house where you may not see the bottle, much less handle it. But, on the other hand, it is such unexpected whims and unreasonableness that are the life-blood of these old originals. Any dull creature can be reasonable.

Now comes a priceless touch: “On the other side was the door into an old chapel, not used for devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting of a cold chine of beef, venison pasty, gammon of bacon, or great apple pye, with thick crust, extremely baked.” “Never wanting” is splendid. One longs to know more of the service of this house—of the cook who fell in so complacently with such a master’s needs and ways. “Never wanting!”

Like Bishop Corbet’s fairies, Mr. Hastings was of the old profession. “His table cost him not much, though it was good to eat at. His sports supplied all but beef and mutton, except Fridays, when he had the best salt fish (as well as other fish) he could get; and was the day his neighbours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it in with ‘My part lies therein-a.’” “He always sung it in.” Here lies an old custom indeed, dead, I suppose, as Mr. Hastings himself and all his spaniels and kittens. Who sings in a pudding to-day? And, indeed, what pudding is worth singing in? Not the rice which I had yesterday, at any rate.

And so we come to the end: “He was well-natured but soon angry.... He lived to be a hundred; never lost his eyesight, but always wrote and read without spectacles; and got on horseback without help. Until past four score he rode to the death of a stag as well as any.” He was buried in Horton church in 1650 at the age of ninety and nine, and England will never know anything like him again. Gone are such spacious days and ways; gone such idiosyncrasy and humour. Only, I imagine, on the bowling-greens are Mr. Hastings’ characteristics to be still observed; for our old devotees of that leisurely contest, that most pacific warfare, cannot in their attitudes, gestures and expressions differ much from the Squire of Woodlands. Just so did he, three hundred years ago, contort and twist his frame, as he watched his bowl’s career and bent every nerve and fibre to influence it to swerve at the last dying moment on the jack between his two rivals. These elemental anxieties do not change.

Thoughts on Tan

In my search for the curious, which I hope that nothing will ever satiate, I came recently upon this advertisement at the end of a not too respectable comic paper:—